Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae of the Canadian Army, whom a great aunt of mine served with, wrote In Flanders Fields.
Italy officially left the Triple Alliance.
Russian forces retreated from Gorlice.
Australian, New Zealand and British forces withdrew from Baby 700, a hill at Gallipoli after sustaining 1,000 casualties.
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Winston Churchill eulogized the late Franklin Roosevelt in Parliament.
I beg to move:
"That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty to convey to His Majesty the deep sorrow with which this House has learned of the death of the President of the United States of America and to pray His Majesty that in communicating his own sentiments of grief to the United States Government, he will also be graciously pleased to express on the part of this House their sense of the loss which the British Commonwealth and Empire and the cause of the Allied Nations have sustained, and their profound sympathy with Mrs. Roosevelt and the late President's family and with the Government and people of the United States of America."
My friendship with the great man to whose work and fame we pay our tribute to-day began and ripened during this war. I had met him, but only for a few minutes, after the close of the last war and as soon as I went to the Admiralty in September, 1939, he telegraphed, inviting me to correspond with him direct on naval or other matters if at any time I felt inclined. Having obtained the permission of the Prime Minister, I did so. Knowing President Roosevelt's keen interest in sea warfare, I furnished him with a stream of information about our naval affairs and about the various actions, including especially the action of the Plate River, which lighted the first gloomy winter of the war.
When I became Prime Minister, and the war broke out in all its hideous fury, when our own life and survival hung in the balance, I was already in a position to telegraph to the President on terms of an association which had become most intimate and, to me, most agreeable. This continued through all the ups and downs of the world struggle until Thursday last, when I received my last messages from him. These messages showed no falling off in his accustomed clear vision and vigour upon perplexing and complicated matters. I may mention that this correspondence which, of course, was greatly increased after the United States entry into the war, comprises, to and fro between us, over 1,700 messages. Many of these were lengthy messages and the majority dealt with those more difficult points which come to be discussed upon the level of heads of Governments only after official solutions had not been reached at other stages. To this correspondence there must be added our nine meetings at Argentia, three in Washington, at Casablanca, at Teheran, two at Quebec and, last of all, at Yalta, comprising in all about 120 days of close personal contact, during a great part of which I stayed with him at the White House or at his home at Hyde Park or in his retreat in the Blue Mountains, which he called Shangri-La.
I conceived an admiration for him as a statesman, a man of affairs, and a war leader. I felt the utmost confidence in his upright, inspiring character and outlook and a personal regard-affection I must say-for him beyond my power to express to-day. His love of his own country, his respect for its constitution, his power of gauging the tides and currents of its mobile public opinion, were always evident, but, added to these, were the beatings of that generous heart which was always stirred to anger and to action by spectacles of aggression and oppression by the strong against the weak. It is, indeed, a loss, a bitter loss to humanity that those heart-beats are stilled for ever. President Roosevelt's physical affliction lay heavily upon him. It was a marvel that he bore up against it through all the many years of tumult-and storm. Not one man in ten millions, stricken and crippled as he was, would have attempted to plunge into a life of physical and mental exertion and of hard, ceaseless political controversy. Not one in ten millions would have tried, not one in a generation would have succeeded, not only in entering this sphere, not only in acting vehemently in it, but in becoming indisputable master of the scene. In this extraordinary effort of the spirit over the flesh, the will-power over physical infirmity, he was inspired and sustained by that noble woman his devoted wife, whose high ideals marched with his own, and to whom the deep and respectful sympathy of the House of Commons flows out to-day in all fullness. There is no doubt that the President foresaw the great dangers closing in upon the pre-war world with far more prescience than most well-informed people on either side of the Atlantic, and that he urged forward with all his power such precautionary military preparations as peace-time opinion in the United States could be brought to accept. There never was a moment's doubt, as the quarrel opened, upon which side his sympathies lay.
The fall of France, and what seemed to most people outside this Island, the impending destruction of Great Britain, were to him an agony, although he never lost faith in us. They were an agony to him not only on account of Europe, but because of the serious perils to which the United States herself would have been exposed had we been overwhelmed or the survivors cast down under the German yoke. The bearing of the British nation at that time of stress, when we were all alone, filled him and vast numbers of his countrymen with the warmest sentiments towards our people. He and they felt the blitz of the stern winter of 1940~1, when Hitler set himself to rub out the cities of our country, as much as any of us did, and perhaps more indeed, for imagination is often more torturing than reality. There is no doubt that the bearing of the British and, above all, of the Londoners kindled fires in American bosoms far harder to quench than the conflagrations from which we were suffering. There was also at that time, in spite of General Wavell's victories-all the more, indeed, because of the reinforcements which were sent from this country to him-the apprehension widespread in the United States that we should be invaded by Germany after the fullest preparation in the spring of 1941. It was in February that the President sent to England the late Mr. Wendell Willkie, who, although a political rival and an opposing candidate, felt, as he did on many important points. Mr. Willkie brought a letter from Mr. Roosevelt, which the President had written in his own hand, and this letter contained the famous lines of Longfellow:
". . . Sail on, O ship of State!
Sail on O Union, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,
With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!"
At about that same time he devised the extraordinary measure of assistance called Lend-Lease, which will stand forth as the most unselfish and unsordid financial act of any country in all history. The effect of this was greatly to increase British fighting power and for all the purposes of the war effort to make us, as it were, a much more numerous community. In that autumn I met the President for the first time during the war at Argentia in Newfoundland and together we drew up the Declaration which has since been called the Atlantic Charter and which will, I trust, long remain a guide for both our peoples and for other peoples of the world.
All this time, in deep and dark and deadly secrecy, the Japanese were preparing their act of treachery and greed. When next we met in Washington Japan, Germany and Italy had declared war upon the United States and both our countries were in arms, shoulder to shoulder. Since then we have advanced over the land and over the sea through many difficulties and disappointments, but always with a broadening measure of success. I need not dwell upon the series of great operations which have taken place in the Western Hemisphere, to say nothing of that other immense war proceeding at the other side of the world. Nor need I speak of the plans which we made with our great Ally, Russia, at Teheran, for these have now been carried out for all the world to see.
But at Yalta I noticed that the President was ailing. His captivating smile, his gay and charming manner, had not deserted him but his face had a transparency, an air of purification, and often there was a faraway look in his eyes. When I took my leave of him in Alexandria harbour I must confess that I had an indefinable sense of fear that his health and his strength were on the ebb. But nothing altered his inflexible sense of duty. To the end he faced his innumerable tasks unflinching. One of the tasks of the President is to sign maybe a hundred or two hundred State papers with his own hand every day, commissions and so forth. All this he continued to carry out with the utmost strictness. When death came suddenly upon him "he had finished his mail." That portion of his day's work was done. As the saying goes, he died in harness and we may well say in battle harness, like his soldiers, sailors and airmen, who side by side with ours, are carrying on their task to the end all over the world. What an enviable death was his. He had brought his country through the worst of its perils and the heaviest of its toils. Victory had cast its sure and steady beam upon him. He had broadened and stabilised in the days of peace the foundations of American life and union.
In war he had raised the strength, might and glory of the great Republic to a height never attained by any nation in history. With her left hand she was leading the advance of the conquering Allied Armies into the heart of Germany and with her right, on the other side of the globe, she was irresistibly and swiftly breaking up the power of Japan. And all the time ships, munitions, supplies, and food of every kind were aiding on a gigantic scale her Allies, great and small, in the course of the long struggle.
But all this was no more than worldly power and grandeur, had it not been that the causes of human freedom and of social justice to which so much of his life had been given, added a lustre to all this power and pomp and warlike might, a lustre which will long be discernible among men. He has left behind him a band of resolute and able men handling the numerous interrelated parts of the vast American war machine. He has left a successor who comes forward with firm step and sure conviction to carry on the task to its appointed end. For us. it remains only to say that in Franklin Roosevelt there died the greatest American friend we have ever known and the greatest champion of freedom who has ever brought help and comfort from the new world to the old.
Question put, and agreed to, nemine contradicente.
Resolved:
"That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty to convey to His Majesty the deep sorrow with which this House has learned of the death of the President of the United States of America and to pray His Majesty that in communicating his own sentiments of grief to the United States Government, he will also be graciously pleased to express on the part of this House their sense of the loss which the British Commonwealth and Empire and the cause of the Allied Nations have sustained, and their profound sympathy with Mrs. Roosevelt and the late President's family and with the Government and people of the United States of America."
German troops flooded the Wieringermeerpolder to aid in their retreat. However, on the same day, German units in the Ruhr began mass surrenders.
US troops landed in the Moro Gulf at Cotabatu.
The Battle of the Hongorai River began in New Guinea.
Historian Tran Trong Kim was appointed the Prime Minister of the Empire of Vietnam, the short lived Japanese supported Vietnamese monarchy.
One armed baseball Peter Gray made his major league debut.
Last edition:
Operation Grapeshot, the Allied Spring offensive in Italy, began.
Australians on Bougainville, where fighting was still ongoing, prevailed in the Battle of Slater's Knoll.
Massive kamikaze attacks take place off of Okinawa in Operation Ten-Go, a full scale suicide attack involving surface and aircraft assets. The Yamamoto leaves for Okinawa with only enough fuel to get there, where the plan is to beach the ship and fight in that fashion.
American destroyers Bush, Colhoun, Leutze, Morris, Mullany, Newcomb, Rodman and Witter hit by kamikazes off Okinawa. The Bush and Colhoun were sunk and the Leutze and Necomb were subsequently declared constructive total losses.
The Japanese destroyer Amatsukaze was beached at Amoy after an attack by American B-25s.
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Hitler fired Guderian as Chief of the OKH following an argument. His replacement was Hans Krebs.
Guderian, as we've noted before, would survive the war. He was released from being held as a POW in 1948, never prosecuted for war crimes, and died in 1954 at age 65.
Krebs killed himself on May 2, 1945.
Eisenhower telegrammed Stalin with his plans for advancing in Germany. The British, who were not consulted, protested.
The Red Army captured Balga.
The U.S. 80th Infantry Division captured Wiesbaden.
The 3d Corps took Marburg.
The USS Trigger was sunk by the Imperial Japanese Navy in the East China Sea.
The Battle of Slater's Knoll began between Australian and Japanese forces on Bougainville.
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Hitler visited Hitler Youth members mobilized for combat in Berlin. The child whom he was famously photographed with, with Hitler pinching his cheek, would survive the Battle of Berlin and keep a framed copy of the scene in his house for the rest of his life.
This was Hitler's last public appearance.
The U.S. Seventh Army captured Saarbrücken.
German defensive specialist Gotthard Heinrici replaced Heinrich Himmler as commander of Army Group Vistula.
The Germans began to massacre forced workers in the Arnsberg Forest Massacre.
The Australian Army carried out Operation Platypus, in which troops from Z Special Unit were inserted into the Balikpapan area of Borneo to gather information and organize resistance against the Japanese.
France signed an economic pact with Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg.
The Navy endured heavy kamikaze attacks off of Okinawa.
The USS Midway was launched.
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Australian forces landed at Jacquiot Bay in New Britain.
The last major air raid on Bochum, German occured. 4,000 buildings and 1,000 people were lost in the raid by the RAF.
The Red Army took Szolnok and Cegled on the way to Budapest.
Royal Navy Minesweepers reached the port of Antwerp while the logistical tail continued to reach back principally to Normandy, a major problem for the Western Allies.
The 5th Indian Division took Kennedy Peak, south of Tiddim.
Field Marshall Sir John Dill died in Washington D. C. at age 63. The British officer was immensely respected in Washington, and is buried at Arlington.
Last edition:
US forces invaded Peleliu. Initial troops were from the 1st Marine Division, which would later be joined by the Army's 81st Infantry Division for the hard fought battle. The landing on the island was in order to seize its airfields for the invasion of the Philippines.
The landings were bizarrely named Operation Stalemate II.
American and Australian forces landed at Morotai near New Guinea. The Battle of Morotai would go on until the end of the war.
The Battle of Gemmano in Italy ended in an Allied victory.
The Lapland War between Germany and Finland commenced when the Kriegsmarine attempted to take the island of Suursaari in order to secure the shipping routes in the Gulf of Finland. Up until that time the German withdrawal from Finland had been going peacefully, although it was deteriorating as the Germans destroyed things on their way out. The attempted German landing was resisted and the Finns withdrew their shipping from German evacuation efforts, although evacuation from Lapland to Norway, guaranteed by a secret agreement between the countries, continued peacefully at first.
The failed landings at Suursaari were an attempt to secure the island out of a fear the Soviets would.
The French Provisional Government issued arrest warrants for Philippe Pétain and his cabinet.
The Great Atlantic Hurricane made landfall on Long Island and Rhode Island.
Last edition:
The I-8 sank the SS Jean Nicolet, a liberty ship, and then engaged in what can only be the torture and murder of its survivors. The atrocities were interrupted by Allied aircraft, allowing some men to survive as the I 8 dived away.
The I-8 had been involved in a prior atrocity. It would be sunk near the end of the war.
Not too surprisingly, Gerd von Rundstedt was relieved of command and replaced by Günther von Kluge as Oberbefehlshaber West . The day prior, von Rundstedt had expressed the situation in the war as hopeless. Additionally, on this day, he sought permission from Hitler to withdraw from the present German lines.
It wasn't the first time he'd been relieved, and he would be brought back.
The replacement would be a bit ironic in that von Kluge participated in the July 20 plot.
Concerning that, the prior day, July 1, Claus von Stauffenberg was appointed Chief of Staff to General Fromm at the Reserve Army headquarters. The appointment meant that he would be in close proximity to Hitler frequently.
The British 8th Army captured Foiano, Italy.
U.S. and Australian troops landed on Numfoor Island, New Guinea.
The U-543 was sunk off of Tenerife by aircraft.
An interesting issue of Sarah Sundin's blog:
Fighting continued on Saipan, with the Japanese withdrawing to their last defensive line.
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Labels: 1940s, 1944, Bretton Woods, Caen France, Eastern Front, Espionage, Estonian Forest Brothers, Gerd von Runstedt, Italy, J. C. Leyendecker, Lithuanian Partisans, Operation Overlord, Waffen SS, World War Two
The Red Army took Feodosia, Evpatoriya and Simferopol in Crimea. The Axis forces of the 17th Army fell back on Sevastopol.
Australian troops took Bogodjim on New Guinea.
The U.S. Army Air Force and RAF raided numerous coast batteries in Normandy.
Operation Overlord had effectively already begun.
Martial law was lifted in Hawaii.
In April 1944, Vogue covered fashions in Texas, Florida and California.
The landing at Saidor concluded on January 2, Operation Michaelmas, resulted in an Allied victory on this date. The Australians and the Americans had linked up, and the Huon Peninsula was mostly occupied.
The Minekaze was sunk off of Formosa by the USS Pogy.
Sarah Sundin notes:
Today in World War II History—February 10, 1944: Japanese surround Indian 7th Division on the Arakan peninsula in Burma; Allies keep the 7th Division supplied through air drops.
The Red Army took Shepetovka, Ukraine.
The U-545 was scuttled after being crippled west of the Hebrides by a Vickers Wellington. T he U-666 disappeared in the North Atlantic.
On the same day, American Airlines Flight 2 crashed into the Mississippi River. All twenty-four passengers and crew were killed. The cause of the crash was never determined.
Air travel between Miami and Key West was initiated.
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The Australian Army captured Shaggy Ridge in New Guinea.
From Sarah Sundin's blog:
Today in World War II History—January 25, 1944: Soviets surround 60,000 German troops in Korsun-Cherkassy pocket in Ukraine. US II Corps successfully crosses the Rapido River north of Cassino in Italy.
The USS Ponape sank the destroyer Suzukaze
Parts of the world experienced an eclipse.
36,000 Allied troops had already disembarked by the prior midnight, 13 had been killed, and 200 German prisoners of war taken, including a drunk German officer and orderly who had driven his staff car into an Allied landing craft. There'd be 50,000 troops on the ground by the end of the day.
Allied troops, under Lucas' command, took up forming defensive positions in anticipation of a counterattack, a decision that was soon controversial, and frankly, a mistake. This is interesting for a variety of reasons, one of which is that Lucas was originally a cavalry officer, with cavalry being the only branch in the U.S. Army that was dedicated to battlefield mobility and had a doctrine of always moving forward.That view as not shared by the other branches. Having said that, Lucas had transferred out of the cavalry after World War One.
The German forces did debate what to do. Kesselring, in command in Italy, believed the Gustav Line could be held along with the beachhead at Anzio. Von Vietinghoff favored withdrawing from the Gustav Line. The German High Command, meanwhile, allocated reserved from France, northern Italy and the Balkans to the effort.
By the week's end, the Allies would be facing 8 German divisions at Anzio.
The HMS Janus as sunk off shores by a Fritz X.
The Australian Army took Maukiryo in New Guinea.
The Detroit Red Wings beat the New York Rangers 15 to 0, which apparently remains a hockey record.
Pistol Packin' Mama was number one on the country charts.
